The Clock Is Ticking
by Zhaneel
Summary: He did say, Get Out didn't he? After what is originally labeled as a robbery gone wrong at Jordan's apartment, Woody discovers a much darker secret about the leading suspect in a case that could either lead to Jordan's rescue, or recovery.
1. Introduction

Sadly, it has been about two years since I have been into fanfiction. If you read any of my earlier works, you can tell that quite easily. I'd like to think my style of writing has changed at least I hope I'm still not writing like a newbie.

**WARNING: I take a long time to update my fics…. So be patient.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Crossing Jordan characters, settings, ect. If I did, I wouldn't have two part time jobs to cover my gas every month. **

Garret waited twelve minutes for the ambulance to come. During those twelve minutes, his heart hammered against his chest, threatening to either explode or toss it's host into cardiac arrest- frankly, he didn't know which. He tried to be calm, he tried to breath deeply to slow the bleeding, but these things are easier said than done when you're an older man whose just been shot in the chest at close range. But his own life wasn't what he was afraid for. He wasn't afraid to die, not at that moment anyway.

Two hours ago he was clocking off from the ME office downtown, arm in arm with Jordan Cavanaugh; who in his opinion, was like the daughter he never had. They had left together in his car; they had gone to get Chinese food with Nigel, Bug, and Lily. Months ago, detective Woody Hoyt would have been with them; but those days had long since passed since the detective had been nearly killed on duty, and had transformed into something much colder and distant that what he used to be. The group of them had enjoyed a short and jubilant meal.

Twenty minutes ago, doctor Macey was just leaving Jordan's apartment after walking her to the door. She had invited him inside for a quick scotch. He had declined, but asked to use her restroom. He had left her apartment nearly two minutes later. It wasn't until he had gotten to the parking garage that he realized that he had left his car keys on her coffee table.

Fifteen minutes ago he had returned to her door to find it ajar. He entered without noticing the fact that all of the lights were off inside. Figuring she had already gone to sleep, he slipped inside and found his keys. Then he heard rustling coming from the bedroom. That's when everything became a blur. Garret remembered calling Jordan's name in the darkness. He remembered hearing a loud thud, and the rustling had stopped seconds after. He opened her bedroom door to find the room trashed. The curtains had been drawn, both lamps had been shattered, her perfume bottles lay on the floor in a scattered heap. Jordan was still wearing what she had worn to dinner, a green sweater and blue jeans.

There was an arm around her neck, ribbons of red along what he could see of her arms. There was a gun cocked and aimed. The barely, he could see, was being pushed painfully into her flesh, under her chin. The attacker from behind was wearing a cloth ski mask. He was wearing black gloves, leather from the looks of it, and was holding a fistful of jewelry in the hand that wasn't preoccupied with the gun.

Garret had hardly the time to react when Jordan shouted out for him to run. Not that he was going to run in the first place. The gunman stole a second and shot the gun three times. The first two shots rang out clear as day, hitting Garret in the gut. He was surprised as his legs gave out from under him. He fell to the floor, holding his wounds and watching in disbelief as his blood ran through his fingers like melted butter. Jordan had screamed his name; she had elbowed the attacker in the ribs. The gun was away from her head now, so who cared if she got a little banged up? That's when the third bullet was released.

Jordan had fallen against the wall, holding her shoulder. Macey had enough time to watch the gunman take a second aim, hesitate, and then seem to think better about killing her. Instead, he watched helplessly, unable to speak from shock, as the gunman hurried her out her bedroom window. Even as he crawled across the floor to reach her cell phone and dial 911, he could hear the pair clamoring down the fire escape. He never heard a car drive off.

That was twelve minutes ago.

It had happened so fast. The 911 dispatcher was asking him for details while he waited for the paramedics. But it became obvious that he was beginning to loose consciousness and patience.

"You have to send someone to find her! Please!" He said helplessly into the phone.

Just then, the paramedics came through the door, stretcher and all. Just like the movies. He remained silent on the ride to the hospital. He had lost two pints of blood by the time he made it into surgery. Nine hours later, he would be wheeled into ICU and connected to a ventilator. One of the bullets had punctured a lung, which lung had collapsed and would have to wait until a second surgery to be removed and the lung repaired. When Garret awoke, it was to find himself alone in the hospital connected to a machine with nothing to busy himself with except the painful realization that he had let both Jordan and her attacker get away.


	2. Early Bird Catches The Worm

Woody mumbled irritably as he felt around on his nightstand for the cell phone that had aroused him from sleep. It was two thirty in the morning and sadly enough, he had only been sleeping for about two hours when his phone had begun to vibrate violently across the nightstand. He flipped the catch and answered, hardly checking the caller ID.

"This is Hoyt." He said grumpily, while rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

He stifled a yawn as the voice on the other end identified themselves as a late night secretary from the station.

"Yeah? That still doesn't tell me why you woke me up so early."

There was a hesitation on the other end, and he could hear papers rustling before the secretary finally told him the reason as to why she called him.

"There was a call tonight for a home invasion and kidnapping. An officer on the scene called here and told me to get in touch with you, apparently the victim is someone you know."

That perked his interest. "Go on."

"Someone from the ME's office… I have the name somewhere…" More rustling papers. "Ah! Found it… 911 call from a cell phone at a Jordan Cavanaugh's apartment tonight at around 1:30 AM."

Woody sat up in bed, suddenly aware of the fact that he didn't know where his keys were and that he wasn't moving fast enough. "Was anyone injured?"

"Yes." Another long pause, as Woody clamored through his closet for clean clothes and a pair of socks.

"An older man was taken to the hospital for two gun shot wounds in the chest. A doctor, Garret Macey."

"What about Jordan?" He asked abruptly. He found his shoes and roughly slipped his feet into place.

"She was taken by the assailant apparently. No witness other than Doctor Macey, and the last update that I have is that he's still in surgery."

Woody didn't even say goodbye when he clicked the "end" button on his cell. For a split second he wasn't sure what to do with himself. How could this have happened? Was it simply a coincidence? Was this a random attack? Did the previous robbery that occurred at her apartment only months before have a connection? His heart hammered against his chest as he sifted through his thoughts and fears about this case. Like it or not, this was hitting far too close to home for his liking. But he was going to be damned if anyone at the station even considered him for reassignment. He'd tough this one out, somehow.

Twenty minutes later, Woody was pulling into Jordan's parking deck. He hurriedly punched the elevator buttons and seconds later he was stepping out into her hall. Some of Jordan's neighbors were speaking to officers, while others tried to steal a glance at the commotion. Bright yellow caution tape had been hung in front of the doorway. Woody slipped on his gloves as he walked under the tape. Cameras were flashing, the Crime Scene Unit was already taking evidence and samples of everything. Woody glazed over the unfamiliar faces of the investigating officers.

One officer, who had just been transferred to Woody's office about a week before his shooting looked up from taking a witness statement.

"Detective," he put down his pen, and slipped the statement into his coat pocket. "I notified the station as soon as I arrived."

"Yeah, I got the memo." Woody glanced around the familiar surroundings of Jordan's apartment. He felt a chill run down his spine. He had spent many evenings here watching TV and eating Chinese. But those nights had long since passed and it surprised him to know how many little details he had forgotten since he had been here last. Her place was usually kept neat and organized, but more from disuse than intentionally. The only time Jordan was ever here was when she was sleeping. Everything was just as he remembered it except for one thing. There was a new fern next to her kitchen window, it's leaves touched the glass with tips of green. The pot it was in was glossy black, fired clay it looked like. She always had a thing for plants. Woody was suddenly struck with the memory of his own plant that she had tried to give him after the shooting. But he had refused, and had then told her to get out of his life.

And now she was really gone. He had gotten his wish.

"What happened?" Woody asked, trying to shake off the guilt that had begun to bore onto him at the thought.

The officer led him down the hall. "There's no sign of forced entry. The intruder came in through the window and left the same way. Garret Macey claims that he returned to her apartment for his car keys, and heard noises from the bedroom. He said the lights were out ,and the curtains had been closed. The bedroom door was unlocked, and he opened the door to find Doctor Cavanaugh being held at gun point. He took two bullets to the chest and said that he heard three shots go off. We found blood spatter on the opposite wall that supports his claim."

"Blood spatter?" Woody interrupted.

"Yeah, we're not sure if it was the victims or the intruders. CSU already took a sample and sent it to trace." The officer opened the bedroom door, "Watch your step." He warned as he pointed to a large, red, moist stain on the carpet.

"Is that…"

"Where Doctor Macey was found? Yes."

"That's a lot of blood. How's he doing?"

The officer shook his head, "The last I heard he was still in the OR and had lost two pints of blood by the time paramedics got him to the hospital. Things are still up in the air as to whether he'll pull through."

Woody carefully stepped over the reddened threshold and started to survey Jordan's bedroom.

His voice was dead as he asked the next question, one he knew that had to be asked and yet dreaded to hear himself say it, "From what you found here, were there any signs of sexual assault?"

The officer shook his head again, "Nope. The room's already been checked for biological evidence, the team came up with nothing. But every piece of jewelry is gone, and her wallet's empty. Everything points to the theory that the guy was robbing the place, she caught him in the act, and for some reason he took her with him."

Woody stepped over the smashed lamp and shattered perfume bottles. He nearly tripped over a heap of laundry that lay on the floor. There were two vacant spots just above her night stand.

"Where are the pictures that used to be there?"

The officer pointed across the room, towards the window. "Right there."

Woody walked over towards the window whose curtains fluttered lazily in the early morning breeze. He prodded at the remnants of the frame and splintered glass.

"We figured he tried to take them with him and dropped them on his way out the window."

Woody shook his head, "No." He picked up one of the corners of frame and tilted it at an angle. "She fought back, threw these things clear across the room at him."

"How do you know?" The officer asked skeptically.

"Because," Woody placed the piece of frame in an evidence bag, and slipped it into is jacket. "This has blood on it, and it isn't spatter."

"It could have dripped from the gunshot wound." The officer suggested.

Woody shook his head, "No. She threw it at him on purpose; she threw it hard enough to break skin… She left this behind on purpose."

The officer still looked skeptical.

"You don't know Doctor Cavanaugh like I do," Woody hesitated, "_did_." He corrected himself.

"Did?"

Woody peered outside of the fire escape and looked down the staircase, trying to determine which direction the two may have fled to.

"We used to be friends."

"Used to be?"

Woody pulled himself back inside of the room and slid the window back into place. He flipped the lock for it to catch and quickly hedged the officers inquiry's into his fizzled out relationship with the missing ME. "Take an inventory of everything in here. This is my case. I want all the evidence you find here transported to the ME office where both Jordan and Doctor Macey work."

"But sir…" The officer began to argue.

"Just do it." Woody cut him off.

The officer didn't press further; instead he turned on his heel and proceeded to pass along the orders. Meanwhile, Woody pulled out his phone. He flipped through his phonebook until he found the appropriate number, a number that he hadn't called on his cell phone for a long time. He punched the "send" key. He waited.

"Medical Examiners Office, this is Nigel." The spunky brit answered on the other end.

Woody had dialed the examiner room's private line, something he used to do almost three or four times a week. But now, well, he just didn't bother.

"Nigel, it's Woody."

"Woody?" Nigel said with surprise, "Haven't heard from _you_ in a while."

Woody could sense his indifference on the other end of the line. Detective Hoyt hadn't expected anything less.

"Nigel, there's been an incident at Jordan's apartment." More than troubled, Woody quickly explained the current findings before ending the conversation.

He wanted to collect as much evidence here as he could before sending anything to the morgue. He kept telling himself that it was his duty as a detective to persist through any case like this, to be as efficient and determined. The truth was, something else was driving him to solve this case.

It was six AM when he finally left her apartment. He loaded his own car with the evidence, and drove everything to the ME office himself. Bug and Sydney were waiting for him at the door. Lily was at the hospital with Garret and Nigel was upstairs, preparing the lab and subbing for doctor Macey.

Wordlessly, the evidence was spread out onto the lab table. Nigel was already checking for similar home invasions that had taken place in the last few months, not only in the city- but in the entire state. As soon as the last of the photographs of Jordan's apartment had been laid on the table, Bug entered the lab with fresh coffee for everyone. He locked the door, and for the next several hours no one left the room for any reason.

Jordan's co-workers hadn't been on the best terms with Woody since the shooting. But it had more to do with the fact that something between he and Jordan had been lost on that night in the hospital. Feelings were hurt and emotions had been running high. But that didn't change the fact that for the following month Jordan had become lost in her work ,and unable to get past whatever was said between she and the detective. Her friends had known something was up, and had kept their loyalties with her.

All of that had changed the second that Woody had made that phone call to the ME office.

Now they worked as a team, like they had before the shooting. They worked relentlessly and without rest for hours. Everything was just at it had once been months before, for the exception that Jordan wasn't on the case. In fact, as Woody realized after the sixth time of reviewing the crime scene photos and statements, this was the first serious case he had worked on without her since the day they had first met. As this thought drifted over him like a shroud of sticky cobweb, both haunting and unable to be brushed away easily, Sydney finally brought back the blood spatter samples.

"Trace just sent these over." He dropped his findings onto the table, adding it to the collection of puzzle pieces they were frantically trying to stick together.

"What did you find?" Bug asked, setting aside another picture of the bloodstained carpet.

"It's confirmed, it's Jordan's blood. From the looks of it, this was a "through and through" shot from close range."

"Consistent with doctor Macey's story." Woody nodded as he flipped through the pictures to find the one of the spatter. "What about the picture frame?"

"All I can tell you is that he's a male and he's white." Sydney handed over the file to Nigel. "Not enough blood to do a full tox screen to check for medications or drugs. I can tell you that this guy didn't pop up in the system for anything."

"That just means that he doesn't have a wrap sheet in Boston." Woody countered.

"I'll check out of state databases. It's going to take a few hours but may be we'll get lucky early on." Nigel said as he placed what was left of the sample into the scanner.

"I guess now, all we can do is wait." Bug said, defeated.

Woody shook his head, "No, I'm going back to that apartment. The team missed something."

"What do you mean?"

"No bullet was found at the scene. If this was a through and through, the bullet is still in that apartment somewhere." Woody downed the rest of his coffee, the fourth for that morning, and suppressed a grimace as his back screamed in protest to this sudden movement. He had forgotten his painkillers at his apartment, and in a couple more hours he knew he'd be paying for it.

"I'll come with you." Bug said, already taking off his lab coat and finding his jacket on the rack.

"No, stay here…" Woody protested.

"It wasn't a request." Bug pushed past Woody, unlocked the door, and made his way to the elevator.

Outside of town, in a country house that sat in the center of a field of uncut grass and next to a broken down hay barn, Jordan Cavanaugh was just realizing the severity of her situation.


	3. Shadows Clothed in Lace

Jordan's arm was on fire as she was shoved into the country house cellar. The doors above her were slammed shut, and she could hear a padlock being clicked into place.

"Hey!" Jordan yelled angrily. "What the hell are you doing? Why am I here?"

Only fading footsteps responded to her demands, not that she had expecting anything more than just that. She started to gnaw at the ropes that had been wrapped around her wrists before being thrown into the car trunk. But her attacker had tied the knot tightly, and it seemed that her efforts were only making her bindings tighter as the hour went by. In the end, she had only managed to chew through a few threads before her swollen and bleeding lips had forced her to stop. She had lost enough blood already; every drop she could keep would count for something at this point.

She fell against the wall of the cellar and jumped as a spider crawled over her hands. She hated spiders, and from the looks of it- this cellar was infested with them. Great. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She choked down a sob that for the past two hours she had fought to contain. She wasn't so much afraid for her own life as she was for Garrets. Her last memory of him was of the chief ME entering her bedroom, and then crumpling to the ground as two bullets had hit him in the chest. The sudden surprise that washed across his features was just as quickly replaced with both fear and pain as he lay in her doorway bleeding to death. Had he made it to a hospital? Was he in surgery right now? She prayed that he had survived, but knew that the chances of it happening were slim. She had witnessed enough gun related murders and investigations to know a fatal shooting when she saw one. But doctor Macey was a fighter, and for now- she'd cling to the belief that he was going to be ok.

Jordan dwelled on her worries of the ME for only a few moments. Her thoughts were quickly interrupted by something shuffling around in the back corner of the cellar. How long had it been since she had been thrown down here? She wasn't sure. _Great._ She thought to herself. _I'm probably in the middle of a raccoon nest or even better… Rats. Wonderful._ She brought herself to her feet and slid along side the wall. But the noise grew closer, and changed into something more of a shuffling.

Her heart pounded against her chest as she became increasingly aware that the shuffling noise was coming from something much larger than a rat or raccoon. She swallowed nervously, "Hello? Is someone there?"

The shuffling stopped, but only for a moment or two. Then it increased, coming faster now.

"Who are you!" Jordan called out into the darkness, unable to keep the growing unease and fear from her voice.

Then, something reached out and grabbed her wrist in a painfully tight grasp. She screamed and fell back against the wall, something she rarely did before now. Then a face appeared in the darkness, illuminated only by the sliver of moonlight that crept in through the crack between the cellar doors. It was a face, with pale blue eyes and equally pale skin. A girl, with skin stretched taught over high cheekbones and a slender nose stared back at her. She was probably in her early twenties, if not her late teens. Pale freckles dotted her cheeks, and her lips were cracked from a lack of water. Her cheeks had begun to hollow and her hair hung in loose strands across her features.

"Don't say anything, or he'll come after you!" The girl hissed.

She didn't loosen her grip on Jordan in the least.

"Who will? Who are you?" Jordan asked suddenly, forcing the edge of fear from her voice.

"Sabrina." The girl whispered. "My name's Sabrina Callaway. You need to be quiet or he'll take you sooner that he should."

"How long have you been down here?" Jordan asked her.

There was a hesitation.

"I don't remember anymore." The girl blinked hollow, opaic eyes at Jordan. "None of us can remember."

Jordan did a double take with the new information, "us?" She peered into the darkness past the girl, trying to define any other figures she may have missed. "How many of you are there?"

"Four of us. There used to be seven of us. There were always seven of us."

"What happened to the other three?" Jordan pressed, the hairs on her neck beginning to stand on end.

"They're dead." Sabrina said simply, without emotion. "Heather was here when I got here. She starved to death about a month after I arrived. He had already stopped choosing her long before I came. Sophia, she was the youngest. We told her to not show fear, but she was too weak and too young. She tried to run one night, and he strangled her in the field as soon as he caught her. Then Katrina." She paused, and sniffed sadly before continuing, "Katrina just couldn't take it anymore. She killed herself with a rusty nail."

Sabrina loosened her grip on Jordan's wrist. "Come with me, you'll get sick if you stay in this part of the cellar."

"But it isn't that cold down here yet." Jordan protested, not ready to learn anymore about the cellar and the horrors it contained.

Sabrina looked over her shoulder at Jordan and blinked once more, "It's not the cold I'd be afraid of. The rats, they'll be coming fairly soon now. They do every night."

The girl nodded towards a corner of the cellar floor, yet another nook that Jordan hadn't noticed before. "Because she killed herself, he refused to take her body."

Horrified, Jordan could suddenly see the outline of a figure in the corner. A lump, slumped against the wall, it was shrouded in cobwebs and smelled of human rot. The stench, which Jordan had originally identified as dead rats mixed with the dry rot of an ancient cellar, was really coming from a rotting corpse- half eaten by rats and bugs. Jordan looked away from the corner, and wordlessly, she followed Sabrina through the darkness. The girl's fingers wrapped around her hand tightly and felt like ice in Jordan's warm palm.

It seemed like they walked for an hour before Jordan finally caught the glimpse of a dim light only yards away. A single light bulb hummed in the darkness, attracting moths and other insects that buzzed around its glow.

"How big is this place?" Jordan asked in amazement as they entered a room the size of the lab back at the ME's office.

Sabrina smiled faintly, "Pretty big. The house above us isn't the original. It was much larger, a sort of southern time mansion smack in the middle of a field outside of Boston."

"You're from Boston?" Jordan asked, trying to think of anything now except for the searing pain in her arm.

Sabrina shook her head, "No. Samantha came from there though."

Sabrina released her hand and headed over to a broken down cabinet whose doors were hanging off its hinges. She knocked on the outside panel twice, "It's ok." She whispered. "It's not him. You're safe."

There was a moment's pause and then the door creaked open. Three figures emerged, each holding hands with the other, each were just as pale and hollow cheeked as Sabrina and just as empty eyed.

The smallest of the three ran over to Sabrina, she released the hand of the older girl and clasped onto Sabrina with both hands.

"This is Samantha, she's the youngest. She doesn't speak much anymore, not since Katrina…" She trailed off, and sniffed again, eyes growing watery.

Jordan waved to the little girl, "Hi." She said softly with a smile.

Samantha blinked back at her, unable to answer.

Sabrina cleared her throat and scooped Samantha up into her arms, she turned then to the other two girls. It was then that Jordan noticed their clothes. All of them wore vintage style nightgowns. Sabrina's was by far the prettiest, aside from the fact that moths in certain places had eaten it, and the lace had come apart from the hem in others.

"This is Lucy," Sabrina pointed to the tallest of the remaining two.

Lucy gazed on and smiled meekly in response. Her eyes were a honey gold and her hair a sunless blond; bleached white from the months of leaving underground. Her nightgown was a sea green, long sleeved, and flowed across the hard packed earth beneath her feet.

"She's from Georgia."

"Grew up on a farm." The girl said softly. "My family raised cows for dairy. He was hired as an attendant. A month later I was here."

Sabrina nodded towards the girl behind Lucy; she looked to be about fourteen, with mahogany curls that bounced against sugar white cheeks. Ebony eyes gazed at Jordan from beneath curly lashes.

"That's Jenna." Sabrina turned back to Jordan. "He broke into her home one night, took her out of her bed while she was asleep and left."

Jordan's interest perked as she heard about the break in.

"And you two- how did you get here?" Jordan asked her.

Sabrina sighed at the memory, "Me, I came home one night after a date. My front door was unlocked. I thought my parents were home. The next thing I knew I was waking up in this place with a concussion. And Samantha, well he took her from a shelter one night while her mom was out getting a fix."

"What about you?" Lucy asked quietly.

Jordan had unconsciously been pressing her palms against her shoulder, willing the pain to cease.

"Me?" She choked down a grimace; her arm was going numb now. "My boss was walking me home tonight after we went out to dinner. I was getting ready for bed and he took me. We fought in the bedroom. My boss, Garret, he had come back because he had forgotten his keys. He found us in the bedroom. The guy, he had me at gunpoint. He shot Garret twice, we fought over the gun and then he shot me in the arm. Then he just, took me… Along with all my money and every piece of cheap jewelry I ever owned."

Sabrina and the girls were silent.

Jordan broke the silence by asking, "Do you having anything for this? If I don't do something with it soon it could get really bad." She lowered her hand, pointing at her arm.

Lucy took in a breath and Samantha hid her face in Sabrina's shoulder. Jenna's eyes widened and she hurried over to a compartment inside of the closet the girls had just emerged from. Jordan could hear her scrambling around inside of the drawers. Jordan's knees grew weak and she was getting light headed from both blood loss and fatigue. She quietly sat down against the cellar wall.

The last thing she heard before slipping into an unconscious stupor was Lucy whispering to Sabrina, "She's lucky. She's damaged. He won't take her until she's healed. May be she can help us."

Jordan could feel someone gently removing the blood stained cloth from her shoulder. Then something cut through the ties around her wrists. She could feel Jenna's hair swish around her cheeks as she shook her head softly, "No one can help us Lucy. We're going to die down here."


	4. Gotta Go

**A/N: Sorry it's taken so long. Thanks for being patient. Exams are about to start and these next couple weeks I think I'm going to just crash. Enjoy**

When Garret Macey awoke twelve hours after being shot, it was to discover that it was not he- but a machine that breathed for him. At first, the sensation of having air being pumped into his body threw him off balance. For the first few moments, he didn't know where he was. The last thing he remembered was being shot, watching Jordan being taken from her home on Pearle Street, and then falling unconscious. He blinked away the sleep that had collected on his lashes during and after surgery. He felt groggy, his mouth felt waxy and as if something had died in it, and his chest... His chest felt completely numb, save for the sharp pains that cut through his back now and again. But the fact he could feel something in his back, well that was worth something wasn't it? On any other day, he might have thought so. But as he lay in that hospital room, unable to move, and unable to breath without assistance, only one thought overpowered his emotions. _Where's Jordan?_

"Garret?" A familiar voice soothed softly.

Too weak from surgery and medication to turn his head, Garret's eyes shifted in the direction the voice was coming from.

"Hey there" He caught a blurred image of a familiar red head with kind eyes and soft features.

Lily's eyes were puffy and red from crying hours before in the waiting room. After hearing that Garret's heart had failed during the procedure, she had thought he was finished. But just as soon as she had been told, the doctor had informed her that they were able to revive him. He would be on a respirator for a day or two, and then they would try for a second surgery to remove the other bullet.

"The second bullet is lodged in his breastbone. It isn't going anywhere for now, so it isn't an immediate risk if we have to leave it in a little longer. We'll just have to keep a close eye on him for infection or inflammation in the meantime."

"_Can I see him?" Lilly had asked quietly._

_The doctor had shaken his head, "I'm sorry miss, but doctor Macey is in ICU right now. You aren't listed as being the next of kin so I can't let you…"_

"_Please?" Lilly had asked quietly, her doe eyes pleading with the surgeon. "It could be hours before anyone can get a hold of his ex wife and daughter. If something happens between now and then, he shouldn't be alone."_

_The surgeon had paused in thought. He lowered his voice and said simply, "I can only tell you that no one is supposed to see you in there. I've warned you. If you should go against my wishes, well- I can't really tell you that anything good will come of it."_

And with that he had headed back down the hall. Lilly waited outside the room for the nurses to leave. She had waited for the shift change, then entered the dimly lit room which had both it's blinds drawn and door closed. That was an hour ago. One nurse had entered, thinking Lily his wife, and had left the room without question. She wasn't going anywhere.

She wrapped her fingers around his and smiled as she looked at him. "Gave us all quite a scare."

He blinked simply, unable to do much else. Only one thought was on his mind, _is she ok? Tell me she's ok._

Lily must have been a mind reader because the next thing she said was, "Woody's been working with the guys at the lab since seven this morning. It's going pretty slow right now, but they've got a DNA sample that Nigel's running through the crime database as we speak." She patted the top of his hand, "Don't worry about a thing, ok? Woody will take care of it."

Garret's eyes rolled to the ceiling, they blinked furiously and his brow furrowed with strain. Jordan was a daughter to him, not just a colleague. If something happened to her, if she was killed when he could have done something to stop it from happening, he could never forgive himself. He had worked enough cases in his lifetime to know the possible outcomes in the hours before her death. The knowledge of these things were even more torturous to him than the question that asked where she was. She could be dying somewhere, bleeding to death and alone. The attacker could have beaten her to death, tossed her into the river, or shoved her off onto someone else. Each scenario played through his mind again and again.

Lily knew he'd do this to himself, and rather than act as a grief councilor, she chose to be a friend. She stayed with him, in the silence of his hospital room, and together they waited for updates from the morgue.

Hours later Woody had lost both his tie and his jacket in the lab of the city morgue. Sydney had been forced to take over some autopsies that had been piling up in the crypt all day. In between his sessions he had returned to the lab to find out Nigel and Bugs latest findings.

So far, the bullet, which had been lodged in a hole that was covered in blood spatter, had been matched to a 22 caliber. This bullet matched the one that had been taken from Garrets chest just hours before. There was a smudge of dirt found on the fire escape with a well-mangled spiders leg imbedded in the dirt. Bug had discovered only that the contents of the dirt contained the same composition of every other location inside or outside of Boston. Nothing about it's composition was unique in anyway. Bug was busy trying to identify the damaged spider leg when Nigel's computer froze on a certain profile.

"I got it!" Nigel shouted in triumph. He quickly hit the print keys on his computer as Woody waited anxiously by the printer.

Out zipped a simple sheet of paper with a mug shot of a man that Woody had never seen before. The man had cold gray eyes, a face that could have been chiseled in stone- unwavering to human emotions. His name was Derrick Sniger. The photo was taken when he had been a kid, nineteen years old according to the profile. His hair was dark brown and hung over in his eyes just slightly.

"Arrested back in 1967 for assault against a girl by the name of…" Nigel read off the screen, "Hannah Somberson- but she dropped the charges by the end of the same week."

Nigel clicked onto the next window and whistled softly, "Did a number on this one."

Hannah, it seemed, would have been a pretty girl had in the photo her face not been splotched with countless bruises and cuts. Her hair was disheveled, and parts of her scalp were bare from where large portions of her curly brown hair had been torn from her head. Her eyes were small, her frame petite, but she was tall and looked as though in a few more years she would have been a knock out.

"Nigel, see if you can find a paper trail for Mr. Sniger and get back to me." Woody folded the mug shot and slipped it into his back pocket. He grabbed for his jacket and slipped it over his arms quickly, feeling a sudden burst of energy from the tid-bit Nigel had tossed him.

"Where are you going?" Bug asked, looking up from a text entitled,_ Arachnid Origins_.

"I'm going to go find out where Hannah is, and ask her what made her drop those charges."

He was out the door before anyone could say anything further. Detective Hoyt was just rounding a corner when he nearly ran into someone he hadn't been expecting to see.

"Oops, pardon me mate, didn't see you there!"

Detective Hoyt hated coincidence. The aussie, who Woody had come to dislike more and more with each passing week, was now standing directly in front of him. Not only was he in the morgue, but he had come bearing gifts. JD shifted the box of take out into his other arm and held out his hand for Woody to shake.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Woody inquired coldly, not returning the gesture.

The aussie dropped his hand and shrugged, "Just bringing Jordan lunch, like I've been doing for the past few days." He paused, "Where is she anyway? I went in her office and I didn't see her."

"She isn't here." Woody answered coolly.

"Is she at home then? I was going to swing by last night, but…"

"She isn't there either."

"Oh."

Woody turned on his heel and headed for the elevator. He wasn't going to give this spunky journalist any details. Legally, he wasn't supposed to. He could have, but hell- he could do a lot of things, but he wasn't about to make Jordan another spectacle of the press. And he sure as hell wasn't going to release any details to this slopped up mess of a journalist. May be "dislike" was too soft of a word these days to describe the feelings he had for the aussie. But oh well, no time for name-calling and specifics; he had a job to do. As he stepped into the elevator, Woody could feel JD's eyes on his back. Woody pressed the floor key he needed and crossed his arms as the doors began to close. At the other end of the hall, JD held a puzzled expression but didn't try to stop the detective from leaving. Seconds later, Woody was driving to the station to do his own research on Hannah's story and what exactly happened in 1967.


	5. A Plea From the Enemy

"Where's Sabrina?" Jordan mumbled sleepily.

Lucy was examining the bullet wound left over from two days before. There were red lines beginning to form around the wound, and the skin had begun to peel away whenever the bandages were changed. Jordan was showing the first tell tale signs of infection, in another day or so she could have blood poisoning. Without treatment, she would die a painful death by the end of the week. As a doctor Jordan knew it was inevitable, and had kept such things to herself. Her arrival had brought new hope to the girls, and she wasn't about to take it away from them. Woody would come, she knew he would. Even if her rescue became a body retrieval, he would find her.

She shuddered to think of what it would do to him to find her body in the same state as Katrina. What such a thing would do to Garret, to Lily, and to the rest of the morgue who had been her family for the past five years. She would be sent to the morgue for examination and to determine the cause of death. Jordan pictured Nigel unzipping the body bag, bagging her clothes and prepping her for autopsy. She would be a corpse in her own crypt. The ME pictured herself being rolled out of a freezer while laying on a metal slab, half rotted and picked at by rats, a toe tag dangling precariously from her left foot. Her body would be cut to pieces, her organs weighed and measured. There would be a tox report, blood work ups, and every test that could be done under the sun would be administered to her body. Jordan fought the urge to cry at that moment. She couldn't let that happen to herself just yet. She couldn't die in this place; there was still time for someone to find her. There was still time for her to forge an escape. Something could and _would_ be done.

"Where is she?" Jordan repeated more clearly this time.

She could hear Lucy shuffling behind her, probably considering how to answer her question.

"He came this morning and took her. They've been gone for hours."

"Hours?" Jordan looked back at Lucy, meeting the girl's hollowed features with questioning eyes. "How long have I been sleeping?"

In the corner of the room, Jenna was untangling Samantha's hair with her fingers. Samantha was quiet while the older girl fixed her hair. Her doleful eyes held a faraway look about them, like she was in another place and time. It was her way, Jordan thought to herself, of pretending that everything was just a bad dream. Jordan had learned from experience that if you kept yourself disconnected from reality for long enough, sometimes it could be impossible to come back. It was a dangerous way to live, but under these circumstances it was probably the only way the girl could cope. She was surviving simply by ignoring her surroundings.

"Since yesterday. You're fever broke about an hour ago." Lucy answered softly.

Jordan squeezed her eyes shut and then reopened them. Her head was still aching and her shoulder burned with pain at every move she made.

"We're going to get out of here you know." Jordan told her assuredly.

Jenna shook her head, "Don't say that. The others before you, they thought the same thing and look where it got them."

"I mean it." Jordan said coldly. "You will get out of here, we'll find a way."

Samantha's eyes flickered for a fleeting moment in her direction. The corners of Jordan's lips twitched as she noticed the slight and sudden change in Samantha's demeanor. There was still some hope left in the girl after all.

Woody had been avoiding JD's demands for over a day. Garret had tried to tell the journalist that Jordan had simply taken a vacation. Which probably would have worked, save for the fact that JD had tried to visit Jordan's apartment earlier in the day and had exchanged words with a certain guard that had been posted outside of her apartment door. After pulling some strings and paying the right people JD had learned the true nature of both the morgue and detective Hoyt's avoidance. Now the two were in the conference room of the morgue, which coincidentally stood directly across the hall from Jordan's vacant office. The door had been closed and the blinds had been drawn. Nigel and the others were in the lab, reviewing the newly upturned evidence in the case. Woody would have been in there ten minutes before had it not been for JD's impossible demands to meet with the detective in private.

"Hoyt, I'm not going to ask you again." JD hissed, eyes ablaze as he stood nose to nose with the detective. "I want to know everything you know or I swear I'll go to the press with this. I'll drag your name through the mud and back again until you tell me exactly what's going on here."

"Are you trying to blackmail me JD?" Woody asked, his tone encased with calmness that he didn't feel.

"Absolutely." JD answered.

"First of all, you've already tried to ruin my reputation once before. If you want to do it again, go for it. Second of all, if you go to the press with anything you've learned you'll be jeopardizing the only chance we have at finding Jordan. You'll be putting her life on the line just so you can get back at me."

"How so? If everyone knows she's missing than may be there'll be people out looking for her instead of staying locked inside a morgue for three days with their thumbs up their asses, ey mate?" JD stepped back and turned away from the detective. He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing away the onset of another burst of anger.

"We're doing everything we can. I can't release any details to you. You aren't family and you aren't a spouse. You're just another guy, just another journalist, to keep away from this case." Woody was walking on thin ice without a life jacket, and he didn't even care. "If you come anywhere near this morgue, or if you go back to her apartment again I _will_ have you arrested."

"Oh yeah? On what grounds?" The aussie asked snidely.

"For interrupting an investigation, may be something worse. I don't know and I don't care. Get the hell away from this place, or else."

"Now, now, detective," JD sneered, eyes glinting, "You ought to be careful. Sounds to me like you're the one who's threatening now."

"Get out." Woody said coldly. "If I find anything that I think you should know about, I'll tell you."

"Tell me something I haven't heard yet."

Woody paused, "If I tell you anything you can _not_ go to the press. You can _not_ print anything until I say it's ok."

"Fine, whatever mate."

Woody hesitated, carefully considering how much to reveal to the distressed Australian who did nothing more for the detective than cause even more headaches. "There's been a positive DNA match. We have a suspect."

"In custody?"

"No. We haven't tracked him down yet. There's no known address and no record of his where-abouts. As far as we can tell he hasn't even worked since he fell off the face of the earth ten years ago."

"What happened ten years ago?"

"His wife divorced him with their three daughters. He fought for custody on more than one occasion. He was able to get the oldest daughter back, but she died in his custody from an accidental OD. After that things get a little sketchy."

"How so?" JD asked, finally calming down since he was getting some answers.

Woody answered quickly, he was going to end this conversation and get back to the lab. He had to tie up the rest of these loose ends.

"He had a nervous breakdown, self-admitted to a psychiatric ward and then checked out a year later."

"So the guy's a loon?" JD shook his head, "Well that's just great."

Woody didn't say anything; he unbuttoned his sleeves and began rolling them to his elbows. Enough chitchat, he had to get back to that lab. He had his hand on the doorknob when JD interrupted his leave once more, but it wasn't a retort that met the detective. It was a thank you.

"I appreciate this mate." JD said steadily. "Thank you for filling me in."

"Sure." Woody's jaw tightened. God, how he hated that man.

"You know, it _is_ just a job."

"What?" Woody looked back over his shoulder at the journalist who had since stuffed his hands into his pockets.

"What I do. It's just a job." He shook his head again and shrugged, "It's just what I do. You know? And for what it's worth, I'm sorry I wrote that article about you when you were doing the murdered cop case."

Woody didn't say anything. What the hell was he supposed to say?

"Jordan, she was pretty pissed off when she found it." JD cracked a sad smile at the memory. "Thought she was going to tear my bloody head off."

"Sure she was." Woody muttered.

"I'm serious mate, she said I did it because I was jealous or something."

Well now _that_ was an amusing thought. Woody couldn't deny the fact that his interest was now officially perked.

"Of what?" Woody asked coldly. There was nothing between he and Jordan that he was aware of, to be jealous of.

"I don't know," JD shrugged and laughed lightly. "She's the one who said it."

A silence passed between them.

"Just bring her home Woody." JD said quietly.

Woody softened at the other mans plea. In just a few minutes the journalist had managed to threaten blackmail, to expose the case, had admitted an apology, and was now asking for help. His change in moods lay equally parallel to Jordan's change of mind. Perhaps they _were_ a better fit than the detective would have liked to admit.

"I will." Woody promised. He offered a nod in farewell before leaving the conference room to rejoin Nigel in trace. The conversation that had taken place between he and the journalist would be in the back of his mind for the next few days.


End file.
